I always feel that desiring power shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive with making the world a better place. Everyone wants a bigger piece of the pie, but the best way to do that is to help expand the pie altogether. It’s not a zero-sum game.
“The human race is fucked beyond measure” is a loaded and convoluted statement. You could just say that the human race is beyond measure altogether.
But is it? There are no absolute metrics but there are always relative, and we’re always making progress- slavery, women’s rights, LGBT equality, etc. So today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better still.
That said, even if it IS fucked up, what is the specific area of the problem? The knee-jerk response is “human nature”. But people are capable of doing things that are good just as much as things that are bad- and bad things always stay in our minds longer because we’re wired that way (which is the foundation of Murphy’s Law).
Human nature is not context-independent. Being fucked up is not intrinsic.
I put it to you that the only reason why humans are “fucked up” is because of structural failings and outdated, under-examined decision-making. We’ve made tonnes of progress in the sciences, but we’re all still terribly bad at managing emotions. We obsess about winning more than we obsess about truth.
I’d say the most important path out of “fucked up”ness is heightened emotional awareness and understanding, empathy, compassion, for all of us, as a species. It doesn’t need to be cheesy and lovey-dovey- we just need to talk about it enough for it to seep into our culture.
is the human race fucked beyond measure?
I always feel that desiring power shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive with making the world a better place. Everyone wants a bigger piece of the pie, but the best way to do that is to help expand the pie altogether. It’s not a zero-sum game.
“The human race is fucked beyond measure” is a loaded and convoluted statement. You could just say that the human race is beyond measure altogether.
But is it? There are no absolute metrics but there are always relative, and we’re always making progress- slavery, women’s rights, LGBT equality, etc. So today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better still.
That said, even if it IS fucked up, what is the specific area of the problem? The knee-jerk response is “human nature”. But people are capable of doing things that are good just as much as things that are bad- and bad things always stay in our minds longer because we’re wired that way (which is the foundation of Murphy’s Law).
Human nature is not context-independent. Being fucked up is not intrinsic.
I put it to you that the only reason why humans are “fucked up” is because of structural failings and outdated, under-examined decision-making. We’ve made tonnes of progress in the sciences, but we’re all still terribly bad at managing emotions. We obsess about winning more than we obsess about truth.
I’d say the most important path out of “fucked up”ness is heightened emotional awareness and understanding, empathy, compassion, for all of us, as a species. It doesn’t need to be cheesy and lovey-dovey- we just need to talk about it enough for it to seep into our culture.